


It's All Fine

by hubblegleeflower



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: John Watson is not what he seems, John might be a psychopath, Johnlock - Freeform, Johnlock Fluff, Johnlock Roulette, M/M, Or a high functioning sociopath, They could have done this at any time, sherlock loves a puzzle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-22 11:29:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3727126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hubblegleeflower/pseuds/hubblegleeflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson is tired of playing the Good Doctor in a crisis, now that he's back in London and there is no crisis. He needs a crisis, so he can pretend he doesn't like them. It's a little awkward for him. Doesn't seem to bother Sherlock Holmes, though.</p><p>A planned series that explores how Every. Single. Episode. could have ended in a first kiss. So easily.</p><p>(First ever fanfic. Or really, any fic. All corrections and suggestions gratefully accepted, but please be kind.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's All Fine

Walking had always been his refuge. He’d thought of it as patrolling his borders. His body needed to move, and he needed to see the people who lived around him, so he would walk, and walk, and at the end of it he might feel as if he’d got some thinking done. Without having to actually think, of course, because everything he had to think about appalled him. And now his leg would not work. His leg, his _uninjured_ leg, wouldn’t work. Also appalling. He was not a man of words, but that epithet, _appalling,_ hovered around him, attaching itself to everything. Staying in his grey bedsit was even more appalling, with his Sig like a gravity well in his desk drawer. He was resisting being sucked into it, but that day he couldn’t remember why, so he went out.

The sun was completely failing to illuminate anything.

There were trees, and people, and birds (presumably) and bright sunlight, and it _wasn’t helping at all._ He kept walking.

***

“John?”

He heard him, he did, with an utter lack of curiosity as to who would be saying his name. He did not pause.

“John Watson?” It was for him. His name. Habit kicked in and he looked up. Spoke. Shifted his cane clumsily and shook hands. He did not smile.

The meeting with Mike Stamford was awkward. He could feel Mike feeling sorry for him – no, being appalled by him, by how he was now. They got a coffee – why did he agree to that? It could only be awful, but he hadn’t spoken to anyone except his therapist in _days_ and Mike had always been a good bloke. He could be selfish for an hour and make Mike suffer through an awkward coffee for the sake of some company and goodwill. But he couldn’t seem to remember the niceties of ordinary human interaction. Mike was being friendly and normal, and John kept missing the cues.

“...bright young things, like we used to be. God, I hate them.” Stamford laughed.

A beat too late, John laughed too, laughed without smiling, a few short bursts of breath. He didn’t want to make Stamford feel bad. He’d miscalculated his joke about getting shot, too. Everything was coming out so... _angry._ He tried a self-deprecating comment about the cost of living in London, but the anger was still there.

“...that’s not the John Watson I know.”

“Yeah, I’m not the John Watson...” _Stop._ Wrong _, again_. Was there another John Watson? Of course there was, the real one, and he could not reconcile it with anything at all in his new reality. This had been a mistake. The conversation got away from him until he spotted a strange look on Mike’s face.

“What is it?”

And that’s how he wound up being introduced to Sherlock Holmes.

***

Well, they’d see how long _this_ lasted. Sherlock knew he wasn’t an easy man to find a flatmate for, just like he knew that the violin and his tendency to brood were far from his worst qualities as far as sharing living space was concerned. Once he got him into the flat, though, and the papers signed, and the deposits organised, it would be more difficult for him to leave. With luck, John Watson’s evident passivity (bitterness is a paralytic, after all) would ensure that he could keep the flat in Baker Street. And John was a soldier; he was used to living with others, in extreme or at least uncomfortable circumstances – perhaps this would work out. He seemed to be making himself at home.

Sherlock lost track of the conversation and glanced out the window in time to see the flashing lights pull up outside the flat.

“Four.” He felt the others look up. “There’s been a fourth, but there’s something different this time.” His mind began to tick over and whatever he’d been thinking about was gone. He _lived_ for this feeling.

Coat. Scarf. Talk, talk, talk. _Think._ He took no notice when Lestrade left, already sifting and sorting through possibilities. No point in theories with no data, though. Evidence! Off to the crime scene!

Anderson, though. Anderson wouldn’t work with him, and he needed an assistant, but good _god_ , he wasn’t going to let that stop him. His synapses were firing already, the fizz in his brain drowning out everything else. Everything except…

“ _Damn my leg!”_

Right. He did need an assistant. Time to find out what makes this doctor tick. Sherlock did love a puzzle.

***

The emotions that flooded back into John Watson’s life in the wake of meeting Sherlock Holmes were many and varied. Sherlock did not comment on his limp, and never offered help, never slowed down so John could keep up. John could see the rudeness in these omissions, and showed what he considered to be the necessary annoyance, but in truth he felt nothing but relief, not to be looked after, not to be _accommodated._ Because of it, he was not sitting back in the flat (the _sitting down type_ , and the outrage that went with knowing it was true now), but following this extraordinary madman to a crime scene.

He watched Sherlock use his deductions to take people down, people who hurt him – that woman who called him _Freak_ , the man who wouldn’t work with him. (He didn’t do it to Detective Inspector Lestrade, who had come to him for help. He didn’t do it to John - or hadn't yet, anyway.) His complete command of whatever scene he was in, the way he made it spin around his own axis just by being there. _His total lack of fucks given_ , thought John. How many times would he have loved to slam a door in someone’s face when they were being a dick? Permitting himself so rarely. _Who cares about decency? The Game is On!_ Sherlock Holmes didn’t hide who he was, not from anyone. Exhilarating.

Then the hurt abandonment that surprised him with its ferocity, when Sherlock disappeared from the scene, the humiliation when he had to explain his limp to the horrible woman outside Lauriston Gardens, and her noise of disgust at his handicap. What was it about this man that kept John on such a roller-coaster?

“…He’s a psychopath. And psychopaths get bored.”

 _Bored._ The word resonated in John Watson’s brain. The respectable doctor who’d seen far too much trouble for a lifetime would have asserted that all he craved was a little bit of boredom, but it was growing increasingly obvious to John that he was going to be unable to maintain that fiction, least of all to himself. Sergeant Donovan’s parting words – and his own reaction – confirmed it:

“Stay away from Sherlock Holmes.”

He did always so hate to be ordered about, army notwithstanding.

He felt his contrary nature kick into overdrive with something like relief. It was not that he did not believe Sherlock Holmes to be a murderer or a psychopath, it was just that, at the moment, he did not care. He knew he should. He suspected he eventually would. But right now, he was limping down a back street somewhere in Brixton and for the first time since his arrival in London _he had no idea what was going to happen next._

The greyness had shifted at some stage, and the colours were bleeding back in.

***

The smiles started right after the meeting with the Umbrella Man. His clever tricks with the CCTV and the public telephones, the wide open warehouse and his studied nonchalance when receiving the car he had sent. Ridiculous. Possibly still dangerous, of course, but completely ridiculous.

“You don’t seem very afraid.”

“You don’t seem very frightening.” And it was true. This was a game. A very elaborate game, admittedly, and John could only assume a very expensive one as well. Dangerous, too, perhaps, but it was somewhat difficult to take seriously. _Drama._ John allowed his sarcasm more rein than usual. Which he considered fair enough, if the man was going to insult him to his face.

Checking his texts while the man spoke was a nice touch, he felt.

The Umbrella Man shouldn’t have had John’s therapy notes, though. That did throw him. Especially since he lied so egregiously during his sessions, when he said anything at all. John had thought he was doing so well, keeping his cards so close to his chest, and now everyone, it seemed, could see through him.

But look. His hand really wasn’t shaking. He wasn’t interested in the strange man’s assessment as to why not – or rather, he agreed with it so categorically that he didn’t give it any thought. His hand was _steady_. Hm. Why had his therapist not thought to prescribe forced clandestine meetings in empty warehouses with mysterious and vaguely sinister men? Instead she gives him _blogging._ One side of his mouth quirked up in an unaccustomed but vaguely remembered way. _Another surprise_.

He hit on the sexy PA in the car as a matter of course (he knew a thing or two that could divert her from her mobile phone), but his heart wasn’t in it. He had a lot to think about.

By the end of the evening he was running and dodging and racing across rooftops, no cane, no trace of a limp, no _memory_ of a limp until Angelo arrived at the door, and he was laughing, no, _giggling_ with this mad genius and he couldn’t remember a time when _something_ hadn’t hurt and now nothing did, _nothing._

***

Sherlock was giggling, too. _Giggling._ Of course, he laughed often, or, well, cackled, or sniggered, or scoffed. Same thing. But always by himself. And usually at other people, rather than with them. But when John glanced back into the hallway from the front door, as Angelo handed him his cane, smiling at him in wonder, clearly thinking him _extraordinary_ , Sherlock gazed back with a wide grin that was nothing but sincere. Smug, certainly. But sincere.

Clearly, he’d _solved_ John. Psychosomatic limp, gone. He’d be staying. Check, and check. There was something else, though. Some other puzzle about him…?

_He looked good leaning up against the wall like that. He thinks I’m amazing. And sometimes he licks his lips._

Ah. Of course. Obvious. He filed it away, though, because now Mrs. Hudson was fretting in the hall and there were other problems to deal with. The Game had taken a new turn, and there was no time for anything else. These unexpected thoughts began to blur and had faded out completely by the time he confronted Lestrade in the sitting room.

***

John could identify the exact moment when he slid back into focus for Sherlock. He tried his best to appear as if he was just arriving on the scene, but he knew by now that the one person he wasn’t fooling was the one whose pale eyes were now fixed on him from across the police tape. Those eyes had seen right through him from the start, what he’d done, what he craved, who he was. It felt _wonderful._

And now he could just _play_. And no one would judge him, because the people who would judge him had no idea it was happening, and the one person who knew was _just like him._

“A dreadful business,” he said, practically tut-tutting like an old lady, barely holding his grin in check. And then again, shaking his head because it was a nice touch, “Dreadful.” He waited to see how Sherlock would get it out of him, and when he did, John favoured him with his most genuine smile, and his most inappropriate humour.

Sherlock laughed back with him, and John fell in love.

Fell in - ?  _Wait, wait._ _Damn._ Too late, it was done. Just like that: full colour, hopelessly in love. _Damn._ He grinned again. He didn’t think Sherlock knew, yet, and, well, he’d deal with it. John Watson was good at dealing with difficult things. It was the easy stuff he couldn’t handle. 

 “Dinner?”  
“Starving.”

  
(First they dealt with Mycroft: His brother – of course. Same flair for the dramatic. John threw in some awkward stuttering and frowns of consternation to keep his hand in, but he didn’t think Mycroft was fooled. He didn’t care. He made another move on ‘Anthea’ too, to annoy Mycroft. Smokescreen, really. She was hot, with her devastating indifference, but not on John’s radar anymore.) 

They went to the Chinese restaurant that Sherlock knew in Baker Street, still giddy with adrenaline and something more. They did not talk about Jeff Hope or Moriarty, whoever that was, but instead traded stories, ridiculous stories to prove to each other that they were indeed as bad as each other. 

This was new for both of them. John was so used to trying to camouflage his desire for danger, admittedly seeking out the most dangerous situations he could but then playing the role of the solid staid doctor, good in a crisis, longing for the comforts of home but competently discharging his duty. His injury had called his bluff. Everyone assumed he’d be happy to go home, but he'd found, not at all to his surprise, that he could not be solid and dependable _except_ in a crisis. He wondered how he could be so damaged that he craved danger and chafed at safety. Here, though, was a man who openly abhorred the usual, the everyday, the safe and the dull. Who had somehow seen immediately that John could be lured with danger and cured by adrenaline, and had _grinned_ about it. To cast off the persona like an ill-fitting jumper was in its way as heady as taking aim through the window had been. He was smiling. He was still smiling. He could not remember smiling at al since being back in London and now he couldn't seem to stop. _Stop smiling, John. (I can't.)_

***

  
For Sherlock it was also new. Here was a person who had seen more of Sherlock's life in one day than anyone except Mycroft and perhaps Lestrade had ever seen, _and was still here_. And it wasn't pity or kindness (not that people tended to show either of those traits to Sherlock). He genuinely seemed to admire Sherlock's abilities. Extraordinary, he'd said. But not just his abilities; He knew why Sherlock had got in that taxi and why he'd almost taken that pill. Being called an idiot by this man had felt just as good as being called _amazing._ Who else knew he was an idiot and stuck around? He’d met _Mycroft_ , for heaven’s sake, and he still hadn't balked. And now he was having dinner with him and there was that smile again.

They left the restaurant and began walking back to 221B. John hadn’t moved in yet, but it seemed to be a shared destination. Neither man commented on this. 

“John.” Sherlock was never at a loss for words, but there had already been a slew of firsts today, all of them centred around this very, very ordinary-seeming person. There were a number of things he wanted to communicate, and a thousand ways it could go terribly wrong.

John looked at him inquiringly, as they walked, the smile still ghosting around his eyes. Sherlock had gone serious and quiet.

“You followed me.”

John cleared his throat. “Yes.”

“You knew where I was going.”

“Not exactly where – “ he caught Sherlock’s expression, cleared his throat again. “Yes.”

“Lestrade would be furious.”

“Are you going to tell him?”

“No. Mycroft would be – “

“Are you going to tell _him?_ ”

Sherlock waved his question away. “He already knows. He always knows. But look, you just _followed_ me, and you brought a gun, and you knew what I was going to do. You knew.” He couldn’t phrase the question he wanted to ask. Curious.

John heard it, though. He said, “I recognised you.”

“You…?”

“Yeah.” He wasn’t going to explain. “And I like what I see, if I’m honest. And I want to see more. So I needed you alive.” He grinned at Sherlock.

Sherlock drew himself up, making an attempt at his patrician sneer. “People don’t like me.”

They’d arrived. Sherlock unlocked the front door and they stepped into the foyer. John shut the front of the flat behind him, and turned to face Sherlock. His gaze was calm. His hands were steady. “Sherlock, _I_ like you.”

Sherlock blinked. This might be the final piece of the puzzle. His brain fired up as usual, but there was an answering heat that was _not_ usual, down the middle of his chest and deep into his belly.

John continued to watch him. “You said something earlier this evening about being married to your work. You sent a pretty clear message.” He waited.

Sherlock’s eyes glinted. “Actually, do you know what? Ignore me. Ignore all of that. It was just the…er…the shock talking.”

“Shock?” John was not quite smiling again. He licked his lips. Sherlock watched him.

“Shock. I told you, people don’t like me. I’m a little in shock. I need a blanket.” His eyes did not waver from John’s face.

John took a step towards him. He reached up, took hold of the blue scarf with his left fist, and pulled Sherlock’s face towards him. John the soldier set his chin, and moved his face in until he was nose to nose with Sherlock. His voice was low and dark and steady.

“Mr. Holmes, I know _exactly_ what you need.”

A final tug at the scarf, and he was home.


End file.
